Door end caps, and other small items of joy

Published on 01 October 2024

Arrived on my desk this week, was a small package containing relief from months of frustration. The package contained a dozen grey plastic trapeziums, that cap the ends of the aluminium draft excluder strips along the bottom edge of doors throughout the Hall. These caps, it transpires, can easily be kicked off by passing footwear.

I doubt anyone visiting the Hall has noticed their absence. And yet this issue has dogged me for over a year, albeit while dealing with the hundreds of other tasks involved in coordinating Hall activities, as I searched for the supplier and figured out that a missing screw was contributing to these non-sentient critters going missing. Sometimes it's the little things that matter most.

For decades, responsibility for managing the building and what went on inside the building, was split between consecutive Hall Committees and film exhibitors operating under a lease. The level of interest in and availability of funds to complete improvements and repairs varied wildly. As local historian Stan Day reported in ‘The Troubled History of a Grand Design’, “By 1937 [a mere 8 years after the Hall opened] the hall stood neglected and unloved.”

Now that these roles are finally united under a single job title, it’s a curious feeling to consider being equally concerned about door end caps, and whether this month’s jazz concert (Sat 12 October!) will sell out. Such is the breadth and diversity of thought bubbles I think many of us experience in our workplace.

In one moment, pondering how the collapse in music festival attendance on a national level may be linked to rises or declines in local ticket sales; then, what is that tiny silver and black sphere on the Studio floor? Oh, it’s curtain rail roller that has been pulled out of its runner. Now how do I go about fixing that? And how do I adjust the pneumatic door close arms, replace that missing fan switch dial, fix the detached sink u-bend and have the graffiti painted over?

The phone rings, “I’d like to book the Hall please” and in a flash, all those thoughts are pushed aside, to be dealt with another time. Sometimes it's the big things that matter most.